


The Man in the Tower

by blackkat



Category: Talents Series - Anne McCaffrey, Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Psychic Abilities, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:17:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Torchwood Tower Three is a place where Earth sends useful exiles: a Prime Talent, a technopath, and a biokinetic, drifting around in a station at the cross points of three universes and six galaxies. Then a man named Captain Jack Harkness falls through a tear between universes, and finds three very familiar faces on the other side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So. I've been on a bit of an Anne McCaffrey binge the last few weeks, and wanted desperately to write some kind of Anne-McCaffrey-universe/Torchwood crossover/fusion thing. Now I'm a little hesitant to call this a fusion with McCaffrey’s _To Ride Pegasus_ books (specifically _The Tower and the Hive_ series) as I've changed a lot of stuff. However, it does draw heavily from the universe created in that series, especially in regards to the terminology. You needn’t have read the books to understand this story, but it might give you a better idea of where I'm coming from.
> 
> (And it was either this or a _Dragonriders of Pern_ crossover, and idk, that second's a bit crackish even for me.)

"Freight shipment coming in from UNIT Outpost Six, not fragile," Tosh informs him, even as the warning bells start to ring. Her fingers fly over the keypad, accepting the transfer and starting the countdown. "Destination Torchwood Tower One. On my mark: three. Two. One—"

Ianto closes his eyes, lets out a breath, and casts his mind out into the blackness of space.

There's another mind waiting, the UNIT Prime of Outpost Six. Ianto reaches for the Brigadier, touches his thoughts. A thousand words are passed in the space of a second, a hundred tons of cargo shifted into Ianto's grasp to guide down into Torchwood Tower Three's transfer area. As soon as the load is settled, Lethbridge-Stewart detaches with a mental slap to the back and retreats back to the confines of his body.

"Shipment secure," Tosh says, sounding pleased. It's distant, though, almost going unnoticed as Ianto gathers his Talent and prepares for the long 'port jump to One. "Ready for transfer in three—two—one—"

With a heave and shove, Ianto wraps the shipment in bands of mental power and hurls it into the nothingness. Space itself parts around it, and for a brief moment he can see One, a gleaming metal tower seething with life, its feet planted firmly on Earth and a Prime station crowning its top. One's Prime is there and waiting, his mental touch coolly distant and professional.

 _Jones_ , he greets, accepting the transfer and easing the shipment down into One's cargo area. It gives Ianto petty pleasure—carefully hidden, of course—to see that Singh is nowhere near the Prime that Ianto himself is, fumbling slightly on the landing. Had that been a passenger ship, the occupants would have been in for a very unpleasant landing.

 _Rajesh,_ he returns, equally chilly, and then with a sharp jolt he's back in his own body, in Torchwood Tower Three, at the cross points of three universes and six galaxies.

Alone in a huge, gleaming metal station, a Prime Talent with enough power to destroy whole systems.

Alone and trapped in the middle of space with no one for company but an equally disgraced technopath.

Ianto sighs and slumps back in the deep, throne-like chair Primes use for their long-distance work, opening his eyes.

Tosh stands off to the side, watching him with sympathy and no little sadness. She knows what he's feeling, to some extent, but at least she can't _see_ all the places that they can't go. The station and its systems are her whole world.

It isn't the same for Ianto.

* * *

People fear Prime Talents, especially the powerful ones. As soon as their abilities fully emerge, they're marked forever, a tattoo on their foreheads to keep them from ever blending in. Even other Talents are nervous and wary in their presence, careful and cautious even though all Talents, no matter the level, have personal shields on their minds.

Ianto used to be one of those foolish people. He hadn't even thought he was among the ten percent of the population born with a psychic Talent, let alone among the very small handful of individuals born a Prime Talent, until a tragedy had unlocked his ability when he was fifteen.

Most Primes showed their gifts as children—some even as infants. The most powerful ones are born moving objects, teleporting them across the room, reacting to people's thoughts, and broadcasting their emotions.

It's just another way in which Ianto stands apart from everyone else.

* * *

Tosh brings a tray up from the kitchens at the end of the shift, and leaves it next to his chair as she shuts down all but the emergency communications and marks them as off rotation for the next cycle. Archie in Torchwood Tower Two responds with a cheerful acknowledgment, as do the Brigadier at UNIT Outpost Six and Captain Erisa Magambo at UNIT Outpost Nine. They will be the ones picking up the slack, and a little bit of pleasure curls in Ianto's gut—carefully hidden, again, because these people are at least a little friendly to him and Tosh both—at the fact that it takes three Primes scattered around the galaxy to make up the work of Prime Jones and Tech Sato at Torchwood Tower Three.

Tosh smiles at him like she knows what he's thinking, and pushes the last button to close the clear dome of the Prime station. In space, it's always night, but at least off-shift they can pretend like the darkness comes after a long day.

"Eat," she orders firmly, spinning her chair around to face him. "We've got a long shift next time, and a lot of passenger ships. You'll need your strength."

The promise of a lot of work, especially if it's as delicate as moving passengers, is one of the few things that can motivate Ianto to take proper care of himself, and since she learned this fact Tosh has made shameless use of it. Ianto narrows his eyes at her, but pulls the tray closer and eats as quickly as possible—anything to avoid the taste of reconstituted protein rations. "What were our averages?" he asks between bites. "Holding steady?"

Tosh's eyes flicker electric-white in a way that Ianto knows means she's checking through the system. "Increasing," she corrects after a moment. "Non-perishable cargo transfer times are almost half of what they used to be, and passenger shifts are down an average of five seconds. Overall, we're seven minutes faster than our last shift, and almost an hour faster than One's."

Torchwood Tower Three might be a beautiful prison, but at least they're industrious prisoners, and far better than the ponces at One. Ianto hums contentedly, making Tosh giggle at his smug expression, and goes back to his meal.

The next work shift can't come fast enough.

* * *

Sometimes, when it feels especially dark and the halls and chambers echo even more emptily than usual, the door to Ianto's rooms slides open with a soft hiss, and he keeps his eyes on the ceiling as Tosh pads noiselessly across the room and crawls into the other side of his ridiculously oversized bed. She curls up against his side, head on his shoulder, and he wraps his arms around her and holds her close. They've never had sex, never felt the urge—they're more family, brother and sister, than anything else—but comfort is something they both want, at all times, and rarely get.

Space, out here at the cross points of three universes and six galaxies, is lonely, and they are alone.

* * *

But then they're not, because Torchwood Tower Three gets another disgraced Talent—utterly disgraced, to be sent all the way out here. He's a Healer, a biokinetic of a high level, and Archie—a bit of a gossip, if only among the other Primes—confides in Ianto that Owen Harper has been removed from his research posting on Mars because he slept with the Outpost Director's wife.

Thankfully, Owen seems mostly resigned to his exile in Three, because while he's caustic and forever grumbling, he isn't overwhelmingly nasty. He even warms up to Tosh a bit, though he and Ianto will never be the best of friends.

Tosh, Ianto can see easily, is smitten. It's been hard for her, even though she's relatively shy, to have spent the last five years stranded in this Tower, and Ianto doesn't begrudge her the budding romance. Since Owen, trapped out here just as they are, is rather lacking in other prospects, he returns her tentative advances, and Ianto can only hope that he comes to see her for what she is.

And if he misses her warmth sometimes, when the nights are long and cold, well—

Her happiness is far more important.

Ianto doesn't deserve the comfort.

* * *

Sentinel duty is, without a doubt, the most tedious part of the shifts. Ianto hates it, because it is simultaneously dull and shows him just how much time has passed him by since he was first sent to the abandoned Torchwood Tower Three. It's been a long while, and the rest of the universe is marching on. Time for them is a quickly moving thing, something to outrace rather than a creeping morass to endure.

Eyes closed and breathing carefully even, Ianto reaches out to the Talents at the worlds on the edge of colonized space, making sure that nothing has happened since his last check. For the most part they greet him cheerfully, though some project fear and awe in equal measures. He acknowledges them and enters their responses—usually some variant of "all quiet, we're fine here"—into the log, which he sends on to UNIT Outpost One.

His range is good enough that Torchwood Tower One has him scan as much of the frontier space as he can, and it takes time. He's still done eventually, though, and he sighs as slumps back in his chair. There's a low-level ache building behind his eyes, but it's not yet too painful to ignore, so he puts off the thought of going to see Owen.

Owen, who is doubtless attached at the lips to Tosh, since they seem to be in the "first blush" stage of falling in love.

Ianto smiles and rakes a hand through his hair. He's happy for them, he thinks as he stands. Dinner is calling him, and then bed and a long sleep until the next cycle, when he's finally back on a cargo shift.

Of course, that's when the fabric between the universes tears like cheap tissue, and a man in a long blue coat tumbles out at Ianto's feet.

Ianto freezes, his Talent leaping to sew the rift back up. It's hard, like weaving slippery spaghetti noodles that have a mind of their own, but Yvonne Hartman had sent him to Torchwood Tower Three for a reason beyond simple exile. It sits at point where the barrier between the universes is thinnest, the Void beyond simple to cross with the right amount of willpower, and Ianto is the only Prime able to repair it like this. He does, stitching it back up before any bit of the Void can leak through, and then stills the warning sirens with a thought.

When he's satisfied that it will hold, he finally turns his attention to the man at his feet, dropping his gaze to take in the shocked blue eyes and waxy skin of the man from the parallel universe.

"Ianto?" the man breathes, and there's heartbreak in the word. "You're… _alive_?"

This is, of course, the moment when the stranger passes out on top of Ianto's bare feet, and Tosh and Owen burst through the far doors. Ianto closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose, and sighs.

"Oh, lovely," he mutters, because it's either that or swear soundly at his misfortune, and that's never worked before.


	2. Chapter 2

Jack Harkness wakes up somewhere soft and warm, which is a nice surprise, as his last coherent memory is of a Vespiform slave camp in the pouring rain.

This is most definitely preferable.

He's also alone, and while that is one good step above being surrounded by angry guards, it's also a little unsettling, because the room he's in is huge, tastefully decorated and well lit. The door on the far side is the type he's used to seeing in space station, but open, and the corridor beyond it is silent.

Warily, Jack slips out of the bed—also huge, and very comfortable—and takes a moment to look for his things. They've been left on the chest at the foot of the mattress, his coat and clothes tidily folded, his Webly and holster neatly laid out beside it.

 _Unaware of its purpose, overconfident, or just unconcerned?_ Jack wonders, because he'd actually feel a little better if whoever has him had _taken_ the damned gun. As it is, all he can think about is the various creatures he's faced that bullets have absolutely no effect on—there have been more of those, actually, than the reverse, but carrying the gun is a comfort thing.

But Jack's still alone, and it's beginning to bug him.

He gets dressed, because he never knows when he might have to beat a hasty retreat, and he's lost everything he owns too many times to take the chance that it won't be the same now. The place seems deserted, but _someone_ had undressed him and taken care of the thick layer of dirt he'd gathered in the slave camp.

Out in the hallway, huge panoramic windows look out into space. Jack pauses for a moment to study the stars, and yeah—those are about the ones he expected to see. He's close to the Vespiform camp, even if he isn't there anymore. But this station isn't one he's familiar with, which is especially odd given its apparent size.

A sudden blaring of alarms makes him jump and tense, drawing the Webly and looking over his shoulder for security forces bearing down on him, but there are none. Instead, a voice comes over the intercom, female and softly annoyed. "Sorry, sorry, that's a malfunction. She's giving me a bit of trouble today, carry on."

The intercom clicks off, and Jack is left reeling, because he _knows_ that voice.

 _Mistake_ , he tells himself firmly. _She's dead, that's impossible_. Shaking off the tremor of uncertainty and painful hope—because he's an idiot, and he's never in his long life learned _not_ to hope—he pads towards the door at the end of the corridor. It leads to another, and another, with the faint sense of going up.

A flicker of motion outside one of the large windows draws Jack's attention as he walks, and he looks over just in time to see what looks vaguely like a passenger ship wink into existence, hover for a moment, and then disappear. He pauses, frowning, because he's never seen any ship but the TARDIS do that, and even her rarely so smoothly.

Alarms blare again, and out in the field of stars, another ship appears, just as easily as the one before it, though this one looks like a freighter more than anything. It disappears, too, and a breath later the station trembles. Jack grabs for the railing set into the wall and hopes that nothing is going to start exploding.

A sharp click echoes through the corridor, and then an angry voice, sharp with a London accent, snaps, "Oi, Prime, watch it! There's sensitive equipment down here!"

No answer comes over the intercom, but the shuddering stops—just like Jack's heart had at the sound of that voice.

 _Mistake_ , he tells himself again, because it has to be.

( _Two mistakes, at the same time, in the same place?_ something inside his head whispers mockingly. _Really, Jack? Are you that dense?_

It sounds Welsh, that voice, soft and teasing and fond for all that it's mocking him, and he closes his eyes against the pain.

_Ianto._

That name will never not hurt.)

Warning sirens blare again, heralding the appearance and subsequent disappearance of another passenger ship, and Jack pushes the thought away and forges on. There's a door at the end of the corridor, heavy and a bit more ornate than the others, but it opens just the same. Beyond it is an open platform beneath a glass-like dome, giving a clear view of the vanishing ships. A bank of computer terminals sits along one wall, and in the middle of the space, facing out towards the stars, is a deep, bowl-curved silver chair.

The face of the man sitting statue-like in that chair just about stops Jack's weary heart for good.

* * *

Ianto hears the soft, choked gasp, even in the middle of a systems check with Tosh, and looks up. The man from the parallel universe is in the doorway, half-collapsed against the frame and looking far too pale.

 _Owen, get up here_ , Ianto commands, rising to his feet and hurrying forward. _I thought you were keeping an eye on him!_

Owen's curses come in loud and clear, even though he's not a telepath. Ianto ignores him in favor of catching the man's arm and helping him over to Tosh's usual chair before he can crumple. "Easy, easy," he murmurs. "I'm not who you think I am, not exactly."

The man looks up at him with desperate eyes, and Ianto feels something in his heart clench. How lucky the other him must have been, to be the cause of that kind of look.

"You're still a version of him," the man says softly, blue eyes closing. "Which means that somewhere, in some universe, Ianto Jones is still alive." He lets out a long, shuddering breath and slumps forward, his head dropping against Ianto's chest. "It doesn't matter how you're different—as long as you're still the same person inside, my Ianto is living."

Ianto freezes for a brief second, because he's so used to being a Prime, to being out here in Torchwood Tower Three that simple, unexpected human touch is a shock. Usually, it's a near taboo to touch a Prime, because shields don't mean anything to them in the face of skin-to-skin contact.

But this man…Ianto can't read him. It's not like he's shielded; psychically, he's not even _there_.

That has never, ever happened before.

Before he can panic, though, the bells warning of an incoming freight shipment begin to ring. The suddenness of the noise jerks Ianto away from the man, and force of long habit has him stumbling back to his chair before his brain can even make the connection.

"Tosh," he says, ignoring the man's full-body flinch. "I need you up here—"

"I'm here, I'm here!" she cuts him off breathlessly, throwing herself through the door and straight at the computer terminal. "Chemical shipment from Torchwood Tower One, extremely volatile, destination UNIT Outpost Nine—they don't want Prime Magambo handling it because of the high risk, but she'll help you guide it in." Her fingers fly across the controls, and then she nods decisively. "Right, accepted. Mark in three. Two. One—"

The tower hums with the force of it as Ianto hurls every bit of his power out into space, aimed at One. He's seen what they term "extremely volatile" before, and it's usually things that he would call impossible to transport. But Director Hartman says jump and they all leap before looking, so he closes his eyes and touches Rajesh's mind.

 _Singh,_ he offers.

 _Jones. Be careful._ The other man sounds unusually cautious. _There might be enough force to severely damage an entire planet in there, if anything goes wrong._

He hasn't even attempted to shift the freighter with its dangerous cargo. Ianto sends his thanks and lifts the container as smoothly as he's able, drawing it high into the atmosphere. Usually, he'd 'port it immediately, but this time he won't even risk the displacement of air that might cause.

 _Brace yourselves,_ he warns Torchwood Tower Three, and jumps the freighter with his breath in his throat.

Nothing happens. The cargo reappears at Three without mishap, and at UNIT Outpost Nine, Prime Magambo helps him steer the load into a secure facility. It's still nerve-wracking, though, the thought of so much destructive power only a thought away from detonating, and once it's safely settled Ianto retreats to his body with a bone-deep sigh of relief.

The man is watching him when he surfaces, uncomfortably pale—paler, even, than he was before. Owen is next to him, fingertips glowing with white light and eyes tightly shut as he studies the stranger's biological makeup, and Tosh is sending the confirmation of arrival to One, eyes electric-white as files hurl themselves across the screen.

Ianto meets the stranger's gaze and smiles a little wryly. "Welcome to Torchwood Tower Three," he offers after a moment of stunned silence. "I'm a Prime Talent, meaning telepathic and telekinetic. Tosh is cyberkinetic, a technopath. Owen is a biokinetic and a Healer. You're not in your universe anymore, sir."

There's another long moment of silence, and then the man cracks a tired, amused smile. "Captain Jack Harkness," he says, climbing to his feet. "Where I come from, I was your boss and the leader of Torchwood Three. But we fought aliens."

And, judging by the man's tone, _his_ Ianto, Owen, and Tosh are all dead.

Ianto looks into quietly desperate blue eyes, a handsome face that he knows even when he's never met the man before, and feels his heart turn over in his chest. It's been a long time since he's felt anything of the sort.

He wonders, though, why Captain Jack Harkness feels like the end of his entire way of life.

Wonders why that thought doesn't terrify him like it should.

Rather, it _thrills_ him.

* * *

Jack can say, with complete honesty, that he's never seen psychic power on the level this Ianto seems to find commonplace. Maybe, in millennia, humans in Jack's world will be able to come close, but for now, to see these people with such skills, in a time equivalent to the Earth he left behind after the 456, is staggering.

And that's just looking as these versions of Owen and Tosh, and to say nothing of Ianto himself, who is… _wondrous_.

Then another alert comes, and Ianto is back to tossing ships around with his brain, Owen heads over to fuss at him in his usual acerbic mother hen routine, and Tosh sits on the edge of her chair with her fingers flying across the keypad.

It's all appallingly strange, while at the same time being terrifyingly familiar, and brings a lump to Jack's throat as he leans against a wall to watch the three of them.

This universe's Torchwood Three.

He's never seen anything quite so beautiful.

* * *

(After the shift, when they all sit down to a meal together, they don't ask Jack any questions about his universe, and he doesn't ask them any about theirs.)

(No one mentions anything about sending him home, either, and Jack doesn't bring it up.)


	3. Chapter 3

Nightmares drive Ianto from his bed before the off-shift cycle is even half done. He gives in, flees them and his too-cool sheets, because Tosh is no longer there to warm them and the surrounding darkness. He doesn't begrudge her the happiness she's found with Owen, but he misses her all the more on nights like this.

When he retreats to the Prime station at the top of the tower and opens the clear dome, the stars above are bright enough that he can overlook the shadows. He curls up in his chair, feet tucked underneath him, and tips his head back to watch the universe slowly rotate past.

Jack finds him there, perhaps an hour later. His footsteps are silent as he approaches, and for once Ianto can't hear the hum of another mind getting closer. Only the hiss and swish of cloth over cloth marks the Captain's presence.

Because Jack is Jack—and Ianto is already familiar with his habits, his personality, after only a few weeks with him—he takes one look at Ianto and drops to the ground at his feet, leaning back against the chair.

"Lisa?" he asks after a moment. There's no pity in his voice, only regret and sympathy.

Ianto closes his eyes, feeling as though he should be surprised even when he isn't. it seems inevitable that no matter what universe he's in, Lisa will always be there, will always be the one to break him apart, drive him to the very brink and then leave him shattered, heartbroken, and utterly remade in her wake.

He nods, just once.

"Ah," Jack says, and that's all. He doesn't ask for the story, or how it happened.

Maybe that's why Ianto tells him anyway.

"I wasn't born a Prime," he says softly, into the warm silence that's filled the room. "My family is from a colony world, where Talents are rare. The central worlds have a higher population, and more chances for Talents to work. And Primes are usually born already showing their abilities. I was tested, as a child, but I was normal. There was nothing."

Ianto hesitates, the next words impossibly difficult, and suddenly realizes that he's never told anyone this before, that when it happened everyone already knew, had felt it themselves and didn't need his accounting. It's a shock to realize.

He clears his throat sharply. "Lisa was a low-level empath, not powerful enough for anything but the most basic training. We grew up together, and I loved her." Involuntarily, his hands clench into fists, and the arms of the chair creak warningly, even though he's not physically touching them. "I loved her so much, Jack," he whispers, feeling helpless.

Somehow, it's not the shock it should be, Jack's head coming to rest gently against his thigh. The Captain doesn't look up at him, but out at the stars, giving the impression of openness without the expectation of waiting. Ianto loves him for it, just a bit, and reaches down to touch the solid firmness of his shoulder.

"There's an alien race we've been fending off for years now," he manages after a moment, ignoring the roughness of his voice. "The Hive, we call them. They're a hive mind directed by Queens, and they want our worlds. One of the reasons UNIT and the Torchwood Towers exist is to guard against them, because though they're psychic, the Primes are better."

There's a reason Ianto has never spoken of this to anyone, because the rage is already building, a living thing that wraps around his spine and eats at his gut. Jack's weight against his side is the only thing keeping him seated, keeping him from standing up and throwing things about, abusing his telekinesis as he hasn't in years. "They're _supposed_ to be better, Jack. That's why we have them, why we have a First Prime on Earth. But Hartman was chosen for political reasons, not her power. When the Hive ships came to my world, Hartman should have linked all of the Torchwood and UNIT Primes together and used their Talents to drive the Hive off. But she wasn't strong enough, and there was no one else who could do it."

The memory burns along his bones, sharp and bitter. A beautiful day, suddenly darkened by the shadows of countless dark ships. He'd been fifteen, hopelessly, helplessly adoring of Lisa, who was three years older, and who—improbably, impossibly—seemed to adore him in return. They were on a date when the Hive ships came, walking back to the town. Lisa was in his head, her emotions bright and sunny, the dark circle of an empath tattooed on her forehead no barrier to intimacy. Some people resented her for knowing their emotions, but to Ianto it was just another part of _her_.

And then the Queens struck, a vast hive-mind that overwhelmed every Talent on the entire planet, burst into their heads like the sharp stab of a blade and ripped them apart from the inside out.

They died, all of them, because Yvonne Hartman had maneuvered her way into a position that by rights shouldn't have been hers.

The Primes in the nearby Towers had tried to link together and drive the Hive away, but they were too week without the presence of the Primes from the central planets, who were on the whole far more powerful. The ships had started to send out drones, ready to wipe out the normals on the planet below, and twenty Primes had cried out simultaneously, reaching for anything, any way to stop the massacre that was coming.

And Ianto, only fifteen, had had Lisa in his head as she died. He had felt her life disappear into the darkness, seen her fall. And it did something to him, broke a part of him, remade the rest. He caught her limp, lifeless body and bore it to the ground as a normal, a non-Talent, and when he stood up again there were a hundred thousand voices in his head, two dozen Primes and a hundred Queens and countless drone-soldiers all beating at his mind like he'd never felt before.

It was Ianto who reached out to all of the other Primes, who grabbed them and reeled them in, wove them together and used the web of their power to hurl himself into space, to pull the Hive ships out of the air and break them into pieces. Always, always before they'd simply driven the Hive away, sent them spinning far back towards their point of origin, but Ianto had just seen his world all but destroyed, ten thousand Talents snuffed out in an instant, and he didn't care that all Talents were trained from birth to never, ever use their powers to kill.

Ianto reached out, seized every mind on those ships, every Queen on her throne, and shut them off forever.

He tells Jack, because he's wanted to tell someone for _years_ now, even though it's never really registered. The old pain is there, the helpless fury, the rage at Hartman for being so grossly overconfident and dooming ten percent of a newborn colony's population for the sake of her political position.

What he doesn't tell Jack is the horror that followed, the revulsion and dismay at the thought of a Prime with the ability to kill, and his exile to Torchwood Tower Three.

Jack is smart, though, Ianto's fairly certain he knows anyway.

* * *

It's petty and disrespectful to the dead, but Jack wants to curse Lisa Hallett and her hold on Ianto, the way she has—twice now—taken a bright and happy young man and turned him into something dark and broken.

He blames Hartman, too, of course; it's her pride and arrogance that led to both tragedies, after all. But this tragedy was on a far different scale, ten thousand lives lost instead of eight hundred, and it's sickening. There are so many parallels here, so many echoes and analogous events and equivalent people, that it's driving Jack to distraction trying to keep everything straight.

He half-wonders what the Doctor will do when Jack doesn't make it to their planned meeting outside the Vespiform camp, but can't bring himself to care right now. Not with his head in Ianto's lap, and Ianto's fingers curled so gently in his hair. Not when Ianto is grieving here, and Tosh and Owen are in love, and Jack can have everything he's lost, all at once.

He half-turns his head, catching Ianto's hand as it slides from his hair, and presses a delicate kiss to the soft skin of his inner wrist. "Shh," he murmurs, closing his eyes and bringing Ianto's palm up to his cheek. "Shh. It's in the past, and nothing you can do will change what happened. Sometimes, you just have to let things go."

The experience behind the words is bitter. Jack's been alive for a long time, long enough to lose so many, many people. He knows how to deal with grief, even though he never does so particularly well. Eventually, it fades, and all that's left are the good memories, the happier times. Even though he'll never forget, Jack can at least grieve and move on, rather than remaining stagnant forever.

He only hopes that Ianto can do the same, even without so many painful lessons behind him.

But, of the two of them, Ianto has always been the more practical. His fingers stroke gently over Jack's cheek as he sighs, long and soft, and sits back in the chair. "Yes," he agrees on a breath, weary and heartsore but grudgingly acknowledging. "You're right, of course." His smile is so very, very sad. "She's gone, and she's been gone for almost ten years now. It's probably time I stop mourning."

At those words, Jack has to wonder if anyone has ever actually _listened_ to Ianto, because the man he sees now isn't the same man he came across an hour ago, burdened and bent double under the weight of tragedies, sins, and dark memories. This man he sees now is lighter, if only a little, and his eyes are a bit brighter. When he looks at Jack, it's no longer as if from a distance, but closer.

 _Almost close enough to touch_ , Jack thinks as Ianto looks down at him. Before he can think better of it, he's reached forward, cupped Ianto's cheek in his palm, and pulled him down into a kiss.

It's good, for all it's light and brief and flavored with surprise. Ianto only hesitates for a brief moment before he kisses back, mouth beautifully soft and pliant under Jack's fingers coming up to curl in Jack's braces. He's warm and smoky and a little sweet, like the coffee he drinks far too much of, and his skin is smooth and firm under Jack's fingers.

It's _Ianto_ , no matter what universe he's in, and Jack wants to cry.

He'd never thought to have this again, no matter how good the universe could ever possibly be to him.


	4. Chapter 4

Ianto wonders, sometimes, if it's destiny or Fate or some kind of biological imperative—if Ianto Jones is always destined to love Jack Harkness, regardless of their origins or respective universes.

Because this…surely this is not normal. Surely, after a mere month in each other's company, Ianto cannot feel this overwhelming tenderness, this rush of pure affection whenever he looks at Jack. Surely he can't have fallen in love with a visitor from another universe, who knows—knew—an alternate version of him.

If Ianto overthinks it, the insecurities might crush him.

But Ianto, who overthinks everything else, isn't overthinking this. It simply _is,_ and that's more than enough to be getting on with. More than enough to build a world on.

Jack looks up and smiles at him across the dinner table, bright and gorgeous even in the face of reconstituted protein rations, which might as well be a mild form of torture. Ianto smiles back, because he can't even think of doing otherwise, and next to them, Tosh and Owen are trading sly smiles and knowing looks. They're the kind of (mostly) blissfully happy couple that wants everyone else to be paired up and equally happy, which is rather unnerving given Owen's usual personality. But Tosh is good for him, and when Ianto looks over at them and rolls his eyes, it's fond.

Jack laughs at all of them, and then grins at Ianto, as if inviting him to share the joke. Ianto rolls his eyes at him, too, flicks a chunk of mealy protein at him. Of course, being Jack, he catches it in his mouth and just keeps grinning.

"Real food," Owen groans, mashing another protein block with his fork. "My kingdom for real food!"

"Oh, yes," Ianto answers dryly. "The medical lab. People will be falling over themselves to take you up on that."

Owen levels his fork at him, eyes narrowing. "Hey, Prime, don't mock. There's expensive equipment down there, and if I wanted to trade it on the black market—"

Tosh shuts him up with a kiss. "I'll put in an order," she promises. "It's not like we're out of the way of shipments here, and it's not like we don't have enough credits, even for a special rush delivery of produce."

"Talk to Archie or his Tech in Tower Two," Ianto advises. When Jack raises an eyebrow in surprise, Ianto smiles at him and explains, "Two's in geostationary orbit around the planet Astraeus, so they have access to items that the deep space Towers and Outposts don't. Archie also won't mind 'porting something here without transfer orders, even though we aren't supposed to make unauthorized jumps."

"Mmm," Tosh says dreamily, leaning into Owen's side. " _Strawberries_."

"Broccoli," Owen offers. "Apples, oranges, kale, spinach, potatoes, pears, _grapes_."

"All of the above, and fresh bread to go with it," Ianto agrees. "I always hated vegetables growing up, and now I don't think I've ever missed anything more."

Jack smiles at them, but this one's soft and a little sweet. Fond and wistful, Ianto thinks, reaching over to take his hand and lace their fingers together. "Pizza," he offers cheekily, to the sound of three despairing groans of naked want.

"That's low, Harkness," Owen complains, but there's humor on his face even as he regards the proteins on his plate, and then pushes them away. "Ugh. You can't utter the P word and expect me to finish this."

With a laugh, Jack raises his hands. "Sorry, just…suggesting."

"Keep those kinds of suggestions to yourself until we haven't gone three years without seeing so much as a leaf of lettuce," Tosh orders, though she's smiling, too; Owen's arm is around her shoulders, and they look utterly content.

Then the siren warning of an emergency shipment blares, shockingly loud in the companionable quiet, and the four of them scramble for the Prime Station at the top of the Tower.

* * *

The quarterly review of all Primes and Towers—undertaken, of course, by the First Prime of Earth—happens several hours later, just as Ianto finishes transferring medical supplies for a sudden outbreak of Grey Plague on Gelos. He's tired, worn out from too many sequential jumps carrying exceedingly delicate cargo and dozens of passenger ships loaded with medical personnel, and in little temper to cater to the woman responsible for a great amount of the tragedy in his life.

It helps nothing at all that she has to send a conference request through the comms rather than speaking mind-to-mind, because she's too weak to hold any sort of connection at this distance, and knows Ianto won't make it easy on her.

Settling back in his chair and trying to keep from letting his weariness show, Ianto nods at Tosh. "Put it through," he orders, waving Owen away when the Healer tries to approach him, hands already glowing with biokinetic energy. "I'm fine. This will be a short conversation, and then you can mother to your heart's content, Owen," he says, with a fleeting smile at Owen's sound of outrage. It disappears abruptly when the screen flickers in warning and Hartman's face appears.

"Prime Jones," she says icily. "Your status report is due."

Ianto glances at Tosh, who nods at him, and then back at the First Prime. "Sent, First Prime," he answers formally. "Our statistics are holding steady. I formally request—"

"Transfer request denied, Prime Jones. We haven't the resources to install another Prime in Tower Three. Additionally, the current restrictions on you and your Tower's personnel forbid you from going planetside, even on temporary leave. Your report has been received. Good day."

The screen goes blank with a sharp beep, and Ianto mutters softly in disgust, leaning forward to rub his hands over his face. Hartman is in fine form today, indeed.

"Well," Jack says after a long moment, unfolding himself from the corner where he'd settled himself at the beginning of the shift. "I see she's just as much a bundle of laughs here as she was back in my world. Who the hell let her keep her job after everything?"

Owen stalks over to Ianto's chair, slaps him on the back of the head in warning, and then settles a glowing hand on the back of his neck. "Everyone's attention was a bit scattered, after," he says. "Prime Jones here shook them all up, and there was no one who wanted to blame the First Prime of Earth when they had a convenient scapegoat already at their fingertips. So she's still there, the three of us are rotting in this heap where no one ever looks, being productive little drones, and no one has to worry about anything so long as all of the rogue Talents are under control."

Ianto lets out a slow breath as the Healer's energy eases every tense muscle and banishes the headache that's been growing behind his eyes since that first emergency shipment alarm. "The First Prime's supposed to be the most powerful of all the Primes," he tells Jack, who's still looking grim. "Even though Hartman isn't, it's still ingrained in people to look at that position and be afraid of the power she has. The First Prime is the reason we no longer have wars on Earth. They're not dictators, and they don't control any governments, but they're a powerful deterrent to anyone looking to start a fight, even for the good of the system, and there's some conditioning that you just can't buck."

"She won't be First Prime forever," Tosh puts in with forced cheer, spinning her chair around with one foot. "Her tenure's up in three years, and then we get a new one. So far, it looks like Prime Harriet Jones is going to be her successor. She's got the backing of UNIT, anyway, and most of the planetary governments, and she's definitely more powerful than Hartman."

Jack looks between the three of them, and then back at the screen, as though recalling the image of Hartman in her dark, authoritative office on Earth. "Harriet Jones?" he asks after a moment. "Not you, Ianto?"

Owen snorts and raps his knuckles on Ianto's head, lifting his hand and stepping away. "Not likely," he scoffs. "Torchwood Tower Three is the hub of the entire Prime system. We handle more traffic than any other Tower or Outpost, and with only three people instead of the usual station's worth. But we're all here so that no one has to deal with us in the civilized world."

Ianto nods, resting his elbows on his knees and stretching out his spine. "I've killed," he says simply. "Tosh was used as a pawn in a plot to overthrow the First Prime. Owen—"

"Yes, yes, we're all horrible people, let's leave it at that." Owen cuts him off before he can finish, then glances at the clock on the terminal. "Look at that, the real shift's about to start. What do we have today?"

It's about as far from a subtle change of subject as it's possible to get, and Ianto rolls his eyes at the Healer, but lets it drop as Jack comes to sit by his feet. "Tosh?" he asks, looking at the tech.

She's smiling fondly at Owen, but turns away at the question and calls up the register with a flick of her hand. "Cargo shipments from Outposts Seven, Nine, and Thirteen," she offers, "and from Towers One, Two, Four, and Five. Passenger ships from Towers One and Four, and Outposts Four, Six, Nine, and Ten. Then Archie requested a sweep of the planet Arke; he says he's felt a new high-level Talent coming online, but it's a bit too far outside of his range for him to pinpoint. Station Echo-Three requests transport from Jupiter to geosynchronous orbit around the planet Eos."

Ianto sighs and rubs at his temples. "Busy shift, then," he mutters, but smiles when Jack drops a gentle hand on his knee.

* * *

Watching Ianto and Tosh work, Jack can see how it's possible for this universe to be so much more advanced than the Earth he left after the 456. Even for the lesser Primes in the transfer system, it's considered nothing at all to jump passenger ships across whole galaxies, or move exploratory vessels like Station Echo-Three past the edge of explored space and into new territory. For every world that's settled, three new ones are found. The human system is expanding at an astonishing rate, even faster than they can colonize the worlds, and the newly populated worlds are never cut off from the rest, which means it's safer and easier and people are far happier to leave the central planets as long as the Primes still exist.

Even in Jack's original time, even with the Time Agency, the universe was never anything like this.

"Passenger ship from Torchwood Tower Four, two hundred aboard," Tosh calls, before Ianto's even finished with the cargo load he's currently handling. "Destination UNIT Outpost Nine. On my mark, in three. Two. One—"

Ianto's eyes never lose focus, even when he's looking at something that none of them can see. Rather, they're a thousand times more focused, clear and sharp and alert. Outside the clear dome, the ship flickers into view, hovers for a moment, and disappears again. A red light appears on the computer console, and Tosh calls out, "Cargo shipment from UNIT Outpost Thirteen, marked extremely fragile. Destination: Bastet, planetside drop. Talent Kathy Swanson is waiting to guide you in."

It's slower this time, but Jack can all but feel the ripple of power bursting outward, the snap of teleportation, and the long, easy glide that the shipment takes as it eases down onto the planet's surface. He's had basic telepathic training, can shield himself from most intrusions, but it's absolutely nothing compared to what Ianto can do, to what any Talent in this universe can do.

He looked up Gwen, once, on a whim. The Tower's database of Talents gave up her name almost instantly. She's a minor empath on the planet Gwydion, married to a non-Talent named Rhys, and has a daughter named Anwen and a job as a peacekeeper, this universe's equivalent of a police force. It's exactly as Jack had expected, Gwen without any outside influences in her life, happy and content where she is, and makes him ache a little.

Of all of Torchwood Three, Gwen was the only one who didn't need it. Ianto, Owen, Tosh, Suzie—even Jack himself—all needed Torchwood to survive, to keep them going.

Gwen never did, and Jack will never know if that was a good thing or not.

Watching the three lost members of his team here, in a place where they're all completely confident in their abilities and their places, where they've all landed after falling so far from grace, it eases the ache that Jack's carried for so long, and that's good.

He hasn't asked Ianto if there's any way to send him back, and he isn't planning to.

Even if he's just an interloper in this universe, even if it's not really his own, he has his team here.

He's not going to lose them again.

As if sensing the thought—though Jack knows he can't, knows none of them can read him—Ianto glances away from the star-studded sky and smiles at him, warm and sweetly caring, and really, how can Jack even think about losing Ianto, _any_ Ianto, again?

He can't, and that's the end of it.

* * *

They're curled together in Ianto's bed when it happens.

Jack's Vortex Manipulator starts beeping wildly, sharp and strident in the warm darkness. He jerks upright, already scrambling to reach it. Behind him, Ianto cries out, falling off the edge of the bed with his hands over his ears, as though hearing something that Jack can't. He hesitates, undecided for a moment, and then goes to Ianto, sliding off the mattress to kneel next to him.

The Vortex Manipulator beeps once more before the Doctor's voice emerges, worried and a little harried. "Jack, where are you? Time to go! Quit playing slave, the Earth's about to be invaded!"

Something in the background explodes, sharp and clearly nearby, and the message cuts off with a yelp.

"The Hive," Ianto breathes, curling forward into Jack's grip and dropping his head against Jack's chest. His heartbeat is quick enough that Jack can feel it shuddering beneath his skin. "It has to be the Hive. I felt the Queens tear through the universes. They must be in your world now, heading for Earth."

Jack's blood runs cold, ten thousand deaths in his memory, ten thousand snuffed out just in the first few seconds of an attack. He swallows hard, thinking of an Earth that has no Primes, no Talents at all to fend off these psychic invaders, and wonders if this is going to be the end.


	5. Chapter 5

Jack isn't in the Prime Station when the doors slide open. Ianto doesn't know why that surprises him, because Jack gives him the impression of liking high places, and there are no higher in the Tower. But the Station is empty but for the jagged lights of the computer console and the sharp metallic gleam of Ianto's chair.

It's automatic for Ianto to cross the open space, bare feet soundless on the cold metal floor, and sink into the chair that represents every change that has happened in his life since he was fifteen. He'd never thought to be a Talent, let alone a Prime, and while some non-Talented children dreamed of suddenly uncovering powerful gifts, Ianto had been content where he was, a son and a brother and a boyfriend. And then everything had been lost, gone in the heartbeat that it took for the Queens to destroy every Talent on Lleu, and Ianto had known seconds after it happened that nothing would ever, ever be the same again.

But Ianto can't regret it, can't regret anything, because it's all brought him here, to this place.

To Jack.

Right now, he's contemplating changing his whole world yet again, and this time, as before, there will be no way to take it back, no way to return. Ianto lets out a slow breath, leans forward with his elbows on his knees, and rests his head in his hands.

The choice is so simple that it's already made, but he feels like it _shouldn't_ be. Like he should be torn between living this life as he has for the past decade and throwing it all away.

The doors slide open with a whisper of metal and gears, but Ianto already knows who it is, can feel the two minds of his only friends in the whole galaxy as they come closer. He doesn't lift his head, even when Tosh takes a seat by his left foot and Owen leans against the side of the chair, arms folded.

There's silence for a long moment before Tosh murmurs, "You're projecting."

It's a start to hear that, because Ianto's control over his power is as close to perfect as any Prime's can be. It _has_ to be, because he has so much of it. He hasn't slipped up since he finished training with Prime Sarah Jane Smith at the age of eighteen.

"Sorry," he whispers in return, raising his head to look at them.

Owen's frowning, but absently. He should look ridiculous, dressed in a ratty pair of regulation boxes and an open, threadbare robe that's seen better days, but somehow he manages to simply look thoughtful. "Don't be," he says, "saved a lot of explanation time. The Hive, huh?"

Ianto nods, and when Tosh reaches up to him, he laces their fingers together. He doesn't have to tell them what he's thinking, what he's contemplating. Even if he wasn't projecting, he has a feeling that they'd know.

Tosh looks at Owen, and Owen looks at Tosh. They hold each other's eyes for a long moment, and then, as one, turn to Ianto.

"Yes," Owen says simply.

Tosh nods in agreement. "There's nothing here for us. None of us have anything to go back to, so—"

Ianto lets out a slow, satisfied breath. "So we go forward," he concludes for her, and it's finished. It's done.

The decision's been made.

The Prime's chair feels like a symbol of power again, though Ianto doesn't know what changed it from the weight it was moments ago. He sits back, rolling his neck and shoulders, and nods once. "Good. Good," he repeats. "Tosh, shut down all non-vital systems. Owen, secure the bays and lock down the doors. We need to block all incoming transmissions from the other Towers and Outposts. I'll find Jack and shut down any Primes that try to stop us."

He rises to his feet and takes a single stride forward, then looks down in surprise. "And clothes. We'll need clothes, too, I suppose."

Tosh giggles, Owen snorts, and just like that, the tension's broken.

* * *

The corridors all blur together after a while, merge and twist into a single continuous stretch of gleaming metal and bright lights and doors leading off. Jack has no interest in what's on the other side of those doors, nor any interest in what's at the end of whatever hall he's walking down. All he wants right now is to keep moving, to ignoring the burning ache of _guiltgriefdutyoh_ god _whatwillIdowithouthimherthem_ that coils and writhes in his gut.

He's going to have to leave, and in doing so, he's going to lose Tosh, Owen, and Ianto for a second time. He's going to have to walk away from all of them, from all of this, and he'll do it. He'll do it even if it feels like tear off his own limbs.

But, _god_ , how he doesn't want to.

Jack isn't a grim person; it's not in his nature. But he's quite capable of recognizing that there are very few things in his long, long life that he's actually wanted to _keep_. For the most part, he doesn't let himself get attached. He steps back when he can, holds himself aloof and apart, and it usually works.

Torchwood Three was his one failing.

Jack's no more immune to the insidious nature of the Torchwood life than any of the others. It got under his skin, into his head—maybe more so than the rest of them, because he'd been at it for decades already. Even now he can't escape it, still lives in the shadow of it, and no matter how far or how long he runs, there's little chance he'll ever rid himself of it entirely.

The corridor comes to an abrupt end in a wide, circular room with panoramic windows. Jack stops, caught by surprise, and stares out at the stars. There are millions of them, so many, each one more brilliant than the last and making even the deep black backdrop of space seem a little less daunting.

So many stars, and the brightest of all is standing in front of the window, one hand against the transparent barrier.

"Ianto," Jack whispers, because this isn't how it's supposed to go. This isn't what needs to happen. Jack has to say goodbye, has to let him go, and he can't do that with Ianto standing there, so beautiful in the pale, cold light, eyes burning blue and expression set. He looks good, looks so much like the man Jack lost, and it's breaking Jack's heart just to _see_ him.

"No," he says softly. "Ianto, don't do this. I have to go."

Ianto stares at him for a long moment, weighing, judging.

Suddenly, Jack realizes what's different about this picture. Ianto isn't wearing his usual grey-and-red uniform that Jack has never seen him—when clothes are applicable—without. He's in civilian clothes, something that looks very much like jeans and a soft black shirt, with a familiar loop of braided leather around his neck.

"Of course," Ianto says, as though Jack's being particularly dim. But then, Jack should have expected that, because Ianto's never once tried to stop Jack from doing his duty, no matter the personal cost. "Jack, I was never going to _stop_ you."

And that hurts, just for a moment, because Jack's aware that he's had far longer to fall in love with Ianto than Ianto has had to fall in love with him, but he'd still thought that Ianto was at least _fond_ of him, and—

Ianto's smiling, sharp and a little wicked as he turns from the window to face Jack. That's…

With a click-click- _thud_ , every light in the Tower goes off. The doors slide closed and lock with a dull thump, and the faint, ever-present whirr of electronic systems is suddenly glaringly absent.

 _Oh_ , Jack thinks.

Ianto glances back out at the stars once more, and the pair of vertical, parallel blue lines tattooed on his forehead—the mark of a Prime, he'd told Jack once; lines to represent telepathy and telekinesis, blue for water, the carrier of life—are eerily vivid in the strange half-light. Then he turns back, and smiles at Jack again, holding out his hand.

"Come on," he says. "I'll take us back up to the station. We don't have much time before the other Primes realize what I've done."

There's nothing for Jack to do but take his hand and pull him close.

* * *

Tosh doesn't ask if Ianto will be able to do it. She doesn't ask if he has enough power, if he's ever even _thought_ of doing something like this before, or if there's any guarantee that they'll make it through.

She doesn't have to, because she knows what the answer will be.

Each Tower and Outpost sends out a continuous, low-level signal to Torchwood Tower One, a simple accounting of all systems in use and the level of psychic output saved for the records. If they're going to do this, that signal is the first Tosh will have to interrupt. It can't be tampered with, even by a technopath, and as soon as Ianto focuses on gathering his power off-shift, it will blare an alarm to raise all of One.

While Tosh doesn't doubt Ianto's ability to see this through to the end, she _does_ doubt his ability to get them across the Void while fending off all of the central-planet Talents.

If they're truly going to do this, if this is the road on which they choose to walk forward, this signal has to go. She has to dig it out of their systems, cut it off at the base and then burn out the roots, and she has to do it before Ianto starts putting up mental barriers against the other Primes.

This is the first step.

Her mind hovers over the connection, the thousand crystal-bright threads of the data stream, moving too fast for any but a technopath's eye to see. She thinks of Owen, of Ianto, of Jack; she thinks of being banished here even when she was forced to go along with the plans of a terrorist group, how she hasn't so much as set foot on real earth in nearly six years. She thinks of a universe that is cold and dark and lonely, compared to the one Jack sometimes talks about, which is bright and beautiful and dangerous, but so very, very _real_.

It should be a difficult choice to make, this decision to change absolutely everything without the chance to ever change it back.

But it's not.

It's so ridiculously _easy_ to tear out the connection, to shut down everything she's worked for so long to keep in perfect order.

She rips them apart, blacks them out, and it feels like freedom.

* * *

Owen isn't a good man. He's entirely aware of this, and has made his peace with it.

Of course, then there's Tosh, who _is_ good, and makes him want to be better.

He's been trying, lately. It's easier when he's getting laid regularly, and Tosh is amazing. Smart, funny, shy, completely unaware of everything that makes her so bloody special. She's worth changing for, and Owen had never thought he'd meet another woman after Katie who made him feel that way.

In some ways, getting caught with his research director's wife and summarily deported to Torchwood Tower Three was the best thing that that could have happened to him. While Owen hates the Tower, hates being locked in and shut away and denied basic human comforts like real coffee and actual food and the ability to leave the station, even just for a day, this is the first place he's ever really felt like he's fit in without having to work at it. Ianto and Tosh are both broken, and Ianto at least knows exactly what it is to have a shit childhood. They've all loved and lost, and not a single one of them is better for it, and they're all otherwise alone in a vast universe that could care less about them.

Owen is a brilliant Healer. His biokinetic scores were almost off the charts in school, and he's got an intuitive knowledge of the human body that usually takes decades for a Healer to build. But that same power makes him dangerous to the people in charge of Talents. It's not a coincidence that, along with telekinetics, biokinetics used to be the main Talents used as soldiers before the Primes came to power. Healers gone rogue are the top killers even now, and while there's a certain amount of respect for Healers, people—even other psychics—fear them more than any Talent but the Primes.

Owen's sick of it, has been since he first registered as a biokinetic at the age of nine.

But here, in this tower far from anyone, he's come into his own. Ianto never flinches from him, only rolls his eyes whenever Owen berates him for his moments of stupidity. Tosh just smiles at him when he touches her, even though his hands can make her cells rip themselves apart. She loves him.

Even if Owen doesn't deserve her, doesn't deserve to be happy, she does, and for some reason he can't even begin to fathom, she's happiest with _him._

There's no way in hell he'll take that away from her.

There's no way in hell he'll leave any of these stupid, brilliant people, or the broken, battered, but nevertheless strong home they've managed to build together, not even if it means following their brash, headstrong, idiotically stubborn Prime and his new boy-toy across the Void and into another universe.

Owen triggers the door locks, checks that all of the cargo bays are secure and the things in them aren't explosive or in danger of exploding, and then heads for the Prime Station without looking back.

* * *

"What do you need?" Jack asks, looking at Ianto. Tosh and Owen are seated by the computer terminal, solemn but settled, easy in the way that means they've long since made up their minds and won't be swayed.

Ianto looks back, brilliant and stubborn and so very much the same man Jack fell in love with years ago. He offers Jack both of his hands, and there's something in his eyes, a depth, a light, a darkness.

"An anchor," he answers, and Jack's breath catches in his throat.

He's not a fool. He knows what this means, that a telepath will anchor himself to Jack's thoughts while he tears apart the walls of the universes and hurls them across the Void. Even in the most minor of mental touches, there's a bleed-through, a mingling of the two minds.

To have Ianto attempt something of this magnitude, with Jack holding him to reality, almost guarantees an unbreakable bond forged between their minds.

"Say yes," Ianto murmurs, and really, Jack has no other choice. Ianto knows that Jack can't die, that he's a fixed point, that his mind is as blank to outside interference as it would be if he were dead.

He knows what this means to both of them, _for_ both of them, and that's the reason Jack meets his eyes and whispers, " _Yes_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written on my phone, with all five of my brothers in the background, and with occasional retaliation breaks when they did something unpardonable, because sitting still in our house is the equivalent of painting a target on yourself and running naked through a warzone. So if there are any glaring mistakes, I apologize. And happy, happy holidays to those celebrating. All the joy in the world to you.


	6. Chapter 6

Archie in Torchwood Tower Two is the first to notice that something's happening. But that's as Ianto had expected, because Archie is the nearest Prime and likes to do a quick check on the other Towers and Outposts in his range when he comes off shift.

It's sheer bad luck that he's coming off shift at the very moment that the barrier between the worlds is it its weakest.

First it's a glancing touch of minds, full of concern. Then Archie reaches for him, tries to touch his thoughts. Ianto tightens his grip on Jack's hands, stepping closer until they're breathing the same air and the heat from Jack's skin is as tangible as a kiss. "Here we go," he murmurs, closing his eyes. "Ready?"

There's no verbal response, but Ianto has never felt either Owen or Tosh so certain of anything except each other. Jack's nod is just as swift, and that means there's no reason to keep hesitating.

Taking a deep breath, Ianto calls up his shields and slams them into place around the Tower.

It takes fifteen seconds before Archie tries to breech the field of psychic force, and another ten after that before he calls the Brigadier and Captain Magambo to help him. Three other Primes follow within another ten seconds, and the force they bring to bear on Torchwood Tower Three would be enough to topple even the most heavily defended planets.

But Ianto is one of the most powerful, precise, and stubborn Primes since the very first, and his shields are too strong for anyone to so much as dent.

By the time they've gathered their strength, Ianto has already unraveled the walls separating the universe, and the Void gapes empty and daunting before them.

A hand at the back of Ianto's head pulls him forward, until Jack's forehead rests against his own. Ianto blinks his eyes open to see Jack watching him, a small smile on his lips, blue eyes so very bright and hopeful. Even though Ianto can't read his mind—can't even _sense_ his mind—he doesn't need to in order to understand what Jack is trying to tell him.

_I believe in you._

_You can do this._

A breath, another, a third, a fourth, and each one is a bolt of courage down Ianto's spine. He slides his fingers through Jack's, weaves their hands together, and focuses only on the two of them.

The whole world—shouting Primes, steadfast friends, hated Tower—falls away.

Another breath, and Jack and Ianto are the only ones who exist in all of time and space. It doesn't matter that Ianto can't touch his mind, because Ianto can touch _Jack,_ and that's even better. He can touch Jack's immense will, his deep grief, his grim wisdom, his boundless caring, the love he has for every person, no matter how broken or battered or flawed. They're all beautiful to him, and Ianto can sense that. He wraps his mind around Jack, anchors his heart and soul and everything that has ever made him Ianto to the love that he feels for Jack and that Jack feels for him.

It's like submerging himself in a river of surging golden light, like leaping from the top of Torchwood Tower One without any way to catch himself, like dying in the same instant as he's reborn.

Ianto takes another breath, and he's never breathed before. He's never felt the touch of skin on skin, or seen the blue brilliance that is Jack's eyes. This is the first time, and the last time, and every possible time in between, all condensed into the space of time between heartbeats.

 _Oh_ , Ianto thinks.

The Void is the opposite of everything, the converse of existence. It gapes before them like the open mouth of some vast grave, a jagged scar of nothingness that is never supposed to touch life. It's like a wound torn in the universe, revealing organs and bones and blood that usually lie hidden from sight.

But here and now, wrapped in Jack and buoyed by light and love and life, steeled by cold certainty and driven by burning conviction, Ianto doesn't fear it.

The lines between Jack and him are blurring, wiped out by the thundering surge of power rising in Ianto's veins. They're merging, fading into one another, and that should be frightening, too. But Ianto can't be scared, not with Jack's mind right against his, the very first trace of Jack-thoughts bleeding into his own. And with those thoughts comes an image, an open plaza—

 _(The Plass_ , Jack tells him without words, without needing to be asked.)

—with a water tower and a secret hidden beneath, and a Rift running through it. _There,_ they think together. _Aim there._

A whisper, a thought, a touch of will as vast as all of space and time, and the other Primes battering at the borders never, ever stand a chance.

The shields fall, sucked up in a vast maelstrom of psychic power, and Torchwood Tower Three is gone before the change can even register.

* * *

"Well. This can't be good."

Amy shoots the Doctor a sharp look, just shy of withering. "You think?" she demands, even as her eyes shift back to the screen, and the vast, brown, hive-shaped ships encircling the Earth. "What are they?"

"No idea," the Doctor answers after a beat, and it falls like a stone into the air around them.

Rory swallows, glancing between his companions. "Do we know what they want?"

The Doctor spins away, pacing across the deck of the TARDIS and raking his hands through his hair. His bowtie lies askew, almost vertical, but Amy hasn't the heart to fix it. "No!" he cries. "They haven't put out any demands, they haven't said anything, they've shot down everything that gets near them—"

"They're building their forces," Amy cuts in, because it's chillingly obvious. "And waiting to see how we'll retaliate—or if we can."

"An invasion," Rory mutters, swallowing again. He offers a brave smile. "Makes you wonder what's so great about this little mud-ball."

A low buzzing fills the TARDIS, rattling their bones. The Doctor spins on his heel and races for the door, Amy half a step behind him. The three of them spill into the Plass, where the TARDIS had been recharging when the strange ships appeared, and stare upwards as hundreds of thousands of tiny brown pods spill out of the big ships in a swarm thick enough to darken the sky. Cardiff shakes with the hum of their engines as they descend locust-like on the planet below them.

"Oh, this is very much not good," the Doctor mutters.

From somewhere beyond the normal plane of perception, something _tears_. The universe itself splits like a broken seam, and for a moment everything in existence holds its breath. Even the invaders seem frozen in primal terror.

Then, with a dull, ear-popping _thud_ , a silver tower is suddenly _there_ , right in the middle of the Plass, gleaming and alien.

Amy and Rory stare at it, glance at each other, and turn to look at the Doctor.

For once, even he doesn't have anything to say.

* * *

The Hive is the very first thing Ianto senses outside of Jack. They're a vast, looming presence in this condensed, contracted world that's so different from the sprawling, thrumming universe Ianto is used to. Ten ships, twenty, thirty, more—he never realized that there could be so _many_ of them. Even when he knew the Queens had torn their way into this universe, he hadn't guessed that _all_ of them had crossed over, that every remaining Hive had come here, to this defenseless world.

Not so defenseless anymore, though.

"Outside," Ianto says, and without any will behind it at all, the four of them are suddenly standing in the Plass, next to a funny little boxy thing that feels alive to Ianto's mind. There are other people, a man and a woman and someone _other_ , but Ianto ignores them, turning his face up to where the sky is turning black from the fighter drones descending en mass.

"Ianto?" Jack asks, stepping away from him just a little, though he doesn't let go of Ianto's hand.

There are no Primes in this world, no Talents at all that Ianto can sense beyond Tosh and Owen. A few Potentials, here and there across the globe, minds waiting for just the right push to awaken completely, but for now they're dormant, and Ianto isn't going to risk tapping into them when they aren't even aware of what they are. The lack of other Talents isn't so much debilitating as it is a shock, the sudden absence of what Ianto has always taken for granted.

But it's all right, because there's still power boiling under Ianto's skin, an echo of what brought them here, and he closes his eyes as it rises within him. This will be dangerous, just as much so as the crossing, but there's no other way.

This is the reason they're here.

"Tosh, Owen, can you help me?" he asks softly, and the response comes in the form of familiar hands finding his skin as Jack pulls completely away, turning to meet a flurry of approaching footsteps.

"Jack!" the _other_ -man cries. "You got my message! Do you know these creatures? I can't get them to talk—"

"The Hive don't talk to any of their conquests," Owen cuts in with a snort. "They just destroy."

And just like that, everything snaps into place like a lock clicking home. The power inside of Ianto hardens and crystallizes as images of Lisa and Lleu and the last Hive invasion fall away. All that's left is this, and the knowledge that if Ianto and Tosh and Owen can't save the world, no one will be able to.

"Not this time," Ianto whispers, and the world trembles.

Within the ships above them, the Queens start to scream.

_Not this time._

* * *

The Hive ships shatter in the sky, as brittle as glass without the Queens to guard them. Ianto watches them fall, Owen and Tosh beside him and twisted through his mind until he nearly can't pick out their individual thoughts, and it probably should feel more like the genocide that it is.

But all Ianto can feel is relief, deep and wide as a river, and Jack's mind pressed right up against his soul.


	7. Chapter 7

Ianto lies on the table in the autopsy bay of the rebuilt Hub, still and far too pale for Jack's liking. But he's breathing, Jack can see it, and that's all he needs for now. Ianto is alive. Even though he's exhausted from teleporting them across dimensions and destroying the Hive, he's still alive.

The Doctor is a dark, unhappy presence hovering at Jack's back, silently sorrowful, but Jack can't bring himself to care about that, either. He knows, if only secondhand, that the Hive were more than capable of wiping out this and every other inhabited planet. Only a Talent of Ianto's skill and strength could have stopped them the way he did, and since there _are_ no others—not on Earth and not on any planet Jack's ever been to, either—Ianto did what had to be done.

Jack doesn't regret it, and he knows Ianto won't, either.

"He's not the man you knew," the Doctor says eventually.

It's a small, sharp pain that the Doctor won't say "loved"—as though he doesn't think Jack capable of such a feeling. But Jack pushes that down, tightens his grip on Ianto's hand, and answers, "I know. I think I love him because of that, not in spite of it. He's…different, but it's a good difference."

It's entirely the truth, and simply speaking it aloud like this is something overwhelmingly _freeing_ , like wings and weightlessness and an open sky. Jack wraps his fingers around Ianto's hand a little more tightly, breathes slowly and carefully because it feels as though he might take flight if he's not grounded. There's a touch of warmth in the back of his mind, a spot of brilliance that is Ianto, and Jack's been alone in his own head for so very long that it's a fascinating change, something small but uplifting.

"Move it, Harkness," Owen snipes, batting both him and the Doctor out of the way as he stalks closer to the bed. "Bloody useless Prime, fainting before he can make himself useful and 'port my equipment into this scrap heap," the Healer mutters, swatting Jack's hand away from Ianto's with glowing fingertips. He touches skin and Ianto immediately relaxes, tension draining out of him like a low, slow sigh. "Bloody useless," Owen repeats, but it's more fond than pissy, and Tosh laughs at him from her place on the steps.

"We're not the same people who were here before, either," she informs the Doctor, still smiling gently, "but I hope you won't hold that against us. We came a long way because your world needed us to stop the Hive."

"By killing them all?" the Doctor asks, but he's not puffed up the way he would normally be, certain of his moral high ground. It seems that he remembers the failed attempts at communication, the planes shot down before they could ever make contact.

"Yes." Tosh's voice is firm to the point of immovable. "You haven't seen what the Hive is capable of, Doctor, or you would agree with us. They take over whole worlds, wipe out all living things on them, and then seed them with their young. The young mature, devouring everything on the planet—even each other—and then follow their parents on to the next planet, and the next, and the next. If I had to guess, I'd say that's the reason this universe has so many kinds of aliens and ours had none—the Hive destroyed them all."

There's a long moment of chilling silence, where even the Doctor looks a little horrified. Then Rory offers, "Well, I for one am all for exterminating bugs before they can spread, especially when they look like that."

From where they're leaning over the railing above, Amy elbows him hard—for the sentiment or for breaking the moment, Jack can't tell—and Rory protests. Owen sighs and mutters, Tosh giggles, the Doctor allows himself a smile, and Jack relaxes in his chair, taking Ianto's hand again.

 _Family_ ,he thinks, and it's everything he's been missing for so long.

* * *

Ianto wakes up that afternoon, a little wan but cheerful enough. Tosh and Owen have been hovering, and the Healer at least hasn't left his side, no matter how strenuously he denies it. when he makes a move to get up, both of them are there, gripping his elbows and pulling him to his feet.

Jack, up in the main part of the Hub, hears their voices and smiles to himself, then begins laying out cartons on the conference room table.

"Jack?" Ianto calls a moment later, as he's helped up the stairs.

"Over here," Jack calls back. "Come on up, I've got something I need your help with."

The three of them trade confused glances, but follow the order anyway. Tosh loops an arm through Ianto's, guiding him, and Owen chivvies them from behind as they make their way to the doorway where Jack is waiting, grinning widely.

One step through the door and they all stop dead.

The conference table is covered with food, more of it than the four of them can eat even if they worked at it all day. Chinese, Italian, Thai, Spanish, and boxes of pizza as the centerpiece—it's everything they haven't had in years, and overwhelming.

"Haven't you ever heard of moderation, Harkness?" Owen mutters, but his eyes are wide, and he's already heading for the pizza box with a look on his face that says they'll need a crane and a good amount of sedative if they want to get him away from it before he's done. Tosh is equally quick to seize a large bowl of salad, piling it on her plate. Jack just watches them with a pleased smile on his face, eyes bright with warmth and fondness.

Ianto puts a hand on his arm, only half for support.

"Thank you," he murmurs, and Jack turns that brilliant smile his way.

"You're welcome," he returns, and the look on his face is so sweet that Ianto just _has_ to kiss it off.

* * *

This new world is strange, much different than the one Ianto has known for over a decade. He walks out of the Tourist Office with Tosh on one side and Owen on the other, and the three of them share a glance and then, as one, lift their faces to the sky.

"God," Tosh whispers after an endless moment of breathtaking blue. "It's…"

"Gorgeous." Owen's voice is gruff and hoarse, on the verge of being choked up, though he'll never acknowledge it. "Bloody hell. How many years has it been?"

"Seven, for me," Ianto offers a touch bleakly. "Seven years in that damned Tower, breathing recycled air, staring at metal walls, eating protein rations."

"Six years and two hundred thirty days, for me," Tosh says, closing her eyes. There's a smile on her face, brilliant and beautiful. "And now…it's over."

Ianto takes a deep breath of fresh, planet-side air, and lets it out in a laugh of relief and joy he can feel from his toes on up. "Makes me want to twist the Tower into scrap metal and be done with it," he admits, and it's _glorious,_ being able to contemplate such a thing.

"Oi! Not until we get all of my equipment out of there you won't!" Owen protests, raising a threatening finger at Ianto. "That stuff's irreplaceable."

Ianto rolls his eyes indulgently. "Yes, Owen," he placates. "Your equipment comes out first, I promise."

Jack comes out to call them in a few minutes later, steps into the tableau of Owen and Ianto wresting around in the dirt like boys, Tosh all but convulsed with laughter off to the side, and just shakes his head.

He's grinning, though.

"Come on, hooligans," he says tolerantly. "Back inside or it's time-out for all of you."

Sprawled over the pavement, Ianto and Owen trade glances, then turn to look narrowly up at Jack. Jack's eyes widen in sudden, horrified understanding, but before he can even begin to move, the two men launch themselves at him and tackle him to the ground. Tosh whoops as they go down, bent nearly double, and laughs even harder.

* * *

The Doctor and his companions take their leave in the morning. In the doorway of the TARDIS, the Doctor pauses and looks back at Jack, standing tall and steady in the Plass with Ianto on his right, Tosh and Owen at his back.

"Don't suppose I can tempt you with a quick trip?" he offers. "Barcelona's beautiful at this time of year. And there are dogs with—"

"No noses," Jack finishes for him, smiling a little. He shakes his head, though, for once entirely unmoved by the temptation. He's already found his Eden, after all. "Thanks, Doctor, but I'm going to have to pass. Earth needs me here, and I've been gone for too long already."

For a long moment, the Doctor just looks at him. Then, without warning, he smiles brilliantly and claps Jack hard on the shoulder. "That's the spirit!" he cries. "Now, onward! Universe to see, all of time to explore, must be off!" He ducks through the door, and the police box shuts behind him. There's a beat of silence, and then with a whooshing, grinding sound the TARDIS fades from sight.

It's an acknowledgement, where Jack never realized he needed one. He closes his eyes, breathes deeply, and can't bring himself to be surprised when Ianto's hand slides into his.

"What now?" Ianto asks, stepping closer to press their shoulders together.

This Ianto is far less cautious with his touches than the other; Jack puts it down to living in a universe where gender no longer mattered in regards to love or marriage. It's…comforting, like a reminder of Jack's own time, and he presses back a little.

"Now?" He looks up at the sky, blue and endless, even with the clouds coalescing on the horizon. "Torchwood's mostly gone—Archie in Two is just about the only one left. I think we should change that."

Tosh steps up on Ianto's other side, pulling Owen with her, and she glances meaningfully at Ianto. "Those Potentials that we felt," she offers after a beat. "They're just about ready to be woken up. If we can train them, and Ianto can identify them, that would make for a good basis for the new Torchwood."

"At least one of them is a Healer," Owen agrees. "Train the little bastards, set up some sort of school, and do it right, and that'll be your new Torchwood."

Jack wraps his arm around Ianto, pulls him close, smiles at Tosh and Owen. He can't remember the last time his heart felt so light, so warm. It's _brilliant_.

"Yeah," he agrees, and if his voice is a little choked up, none of them mentions it. "That'll work."

It will. They'll make sure of that.

* * *

**esto perpetua**


	8. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I…might have possibly lied about Chapter Seven being the last one. This is a bit of insomnia-inspired oddness that wouldn't leave me alone. So this is me, sneaking back in through the side door after I declared myself done with Torchwood. Please be kind to my distinct lack of moral fiber and pretend you didn’t see anything, all right? Much obliged. ^.^’

It’s just gone ten, and Jon is halfway through English when there comes a knock on the classroom door, and the headmaster’s secretary leans into the room.

“Visitor for Mister Jonathon Ross,” she tells the teacher. “The headmaster has excused him.”

Jon blinks at her, because the only person who would ever have the inclination to visit him is his elderly aunt in Yorkshire, and she’s never done it before. Moreover, she’s never expressed even the slightest interest.

Mrs. Bennington nods, and then flicks her fingers at Jon in a delicate shooing motion. “Go, off with you, Ross. Read chapters ten to fifteen and you’ll be ready for the next class.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he murmurs, collecting his books and following the secretary, even as he tries to remember if he did anything—or was _caught_ at anything—lately that would require outside intervention.

The secretary walks too quickly for him to ask her, though, and he nearly has to run to keep up, despite her being a good twenty years his senior, if not more. Jon can already feel his ears start to burn as he hurries after her, through the heavy oak doors that lead out into the sprawling garden on the north side of the school.

There are two men waiting near the steps. One is the elderly, balding headmaster, and the other…

Jon slows to a walk as he nears, taking in the stranger, who isn’t anything like he had expected—not that he’s entire sure _what_ he was expecting, only that is wasn’t a man who looks like a minor government official, if rather more neatly dressed than average. Then he looks up at Jon—not that far up, because he’s over two meters, and Jon is only a handful of centimeters taller—and Jon falters, pinned in place by brilliant blue eyes that seem to see right through to his core.

His ears are _definitely_ red now, Jon thinks despairingly, cursing such an obvious tell of his nervousness.

“Ah, Mister Ross,” the headmaster greets jovially, as though they're good friends, even though he and Jon have never shared so much as a word in passing since Jon was enrolled.

“Sir,” he answers, though he can't quite make himself look away from the stranger, who’s smiling just a little at him. It’s…a bit eerie, really.

The stranger takes a step forward, one hand rising to tip his black derby in greeting. “Mister Ross. Forgive me for the suddenness of my visit, but I tend to like making my offers in person. I'm Jones.” The man offers his hand, like his name is supposed to mean something. It might, but Jon hasn’t the faintest idea what. He takes it anyway, though, because he always tries to be polite, and regardless of his oddity, this man rather…demands it.

“Offers?” he echoes, entirely confused.

Jones smiles at him, a half-quirk of his lips that portrays more wry amusement than an outright laugh would have. “Indeed. If you’d walk with me…?” He gestures to one of the winding paths through the garden, then sets out without waiting for an answer. Jon follows, struggling to keep up for the first few steps. It’s getting to be a theme.

It’s only when they're a good distance from the entrance that Jones finally slows his steps, taking a seat on a bench beneath an old chestnut tree. After a moment, Jon joins him, tentatively taking a seat beside him.

As soon as he’s settled, Jones turns that wry smile on him again, with just a flash of bright blue eyes that leaves Jon feeling entirely electrified.

“It’s likely a bit of a shock,” Jones says, “me appearing like this. Usually I’d give more of a warning, but I was in the area and took a chance.” He offers one long, deft hand, business card between his fingertips, and Jon takes it curiously.

 _Ianto Jones_ , it says in neat, simple script, and there's a cellphone number beneath it. Feeling the embossing on the back, Jon flips it over, and is confronted by much starker, heavier letters spelling out **Torchwood Institute of Higher Learning**.

“Torchwood?” he asks, because he’s been looking at universities all over the country, and he’s never encountered this one before.

“Yes,” Jones says softly. “It’s…a very specialized school for the incredibly gifted. No one gets in without an invitation from the headmaster, and all fees are covered from the moment you set foot in the school to the moment you leave. There's a job offer implied, as well, for after you graduate.” He reaches up, tugging his derby thoughtfully, and then asks, apropos of nothing, “Do you read comics, Mister Ross?”

Jon blinks, wondering what the hell that has to do with _anything_ , but nods. “Yeah—yes. Marvel.”

“Ah.” Jones’ lips quirk a bit, and he glances at Jon sidelong. “X-Men?”

“Of course,” Jon agrees, one geek to another, because no matter how bewildered he is, he knows that tone and that look. “X-Force mostly, now, but…yeah, of course.” And then, because absolutely no one has ever accused Jon of being stupid, the pieces begin to fall together.

The Torchwood Institute of Higher Learning.

The Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters.

Jon swallows.

No.

Absolutely not.

His life is not that cool.

Jones is still smiling at him, but it’s wider now, more pleased, with a sharp edge of expectation to it. “So?” he murmurs, nearly challenging. “Which of the X-Men would you fancy yourself as? Scott Summers? Jean Grey? Wolverine?”

Before he can stop himself—because his brain-to-mouth filter seems to have died somewhere around the word “comics”—Jon scoffs. “Hardly,” he huffs. “Professor X, definitely.”

With a smile that says Jon just passed an exam he didn’t even know he was being given, Jones nods and reaches up, pulling his derby all the way off. “Splendid,” he drawls, sweeping the hat out in loose approximation of a courtly bow. “I think, Mister Ross, that you are exactly the type that we’re looking for at our school. What do you say?”

But Jon is hardly listening, because Jones has a pair of vertical, parallel blue lines tattooed on his forehead, jarring against his civil-servant veneer.

“Ah, yes.” Jones seems to feel the focus of his gaze, and traces his fingertips lightly over the lines. “I suppose that, in the name of making the unbelievable believable, a demonstration is in order? Pick a target, Mister Ross.”

It takes a moment for his meaning to sink in, and when it does, Jon has to physically keep his jaw from swinging free. But when he realizes what’s being asked of him, he quickly casts his gaze around the garden.

There's a very ugly statue that’s _supposed_ to be some kind of Greek hero set beside the next curve, and Jon points at it without hesitation. “There,” he says with no small amount of relish. “That.”

Jones looks at it and instantly makes a face. “Mm. Well, at least if I break it I’ll be doing the Feng Shui here a favor.”

Then he just sort of…refocuses his eyes, faintly quirks a brow, and…

The statue _moves_.

Not just a little. It’s nothing that Jon could write off as a convenient seismic tremor, even if he wanted to. The bloody statue _rises into the air, spins around, and then hops the bleeding wall._

“Oh dear sweet Mary mother of Jesus,” Jon manages to croak.

Jones laughs, dropping his derby back onto his head. “Yes, I suppose that’s one way of putting it.” He rises smoothly to his feet, flicks his fingers, and offers Jon a folder where a moment before he was holding only empty air. “All of the relevant details are in here, Mister Ross. I've already spoken to your guardian, and she’s agreed to leave the decision up to you. Keep my card, and call me when you’ve decided.” He tips his hat and then strides back towards the school, where Jon can hear him exchanging pleasantries with the headmaster, and then the sound of the doors thudding closed.

Jon lets out a long, slow breath, fingers closing tightly around the edges of the file—so tight he’s almost worried that he’ll tear it. Inside him, the part that’s never quite fit in without everyone else—the part that’s always been a little strange, a little _off_ —is dancing in glee, even as the rest of him is frozen in shock.

But he only has to glance up at where the statue used to be to know that this isn’t some sort of mad dream.

Jon looks back down at the folder, but he already knows that he doesn’t care what it says. He made his decision the second Ianto Jones looked at him and _saw_.

He runs his thumb over the name of the school once more, and doesn’t bother fighting the wide, fierce grin that takes over his face. He’ll wait an hour, maybe two—just long enough to be socially acceptable—and then he’ll call Jones back and ask when he can start.

In the meantime… Jon flips the folder open and starts to read. He can at least _pretend_ that he’s making an informed decision, after all.

 

 

The Torchwood SUV is already waiting by the doors when Ianto takes his leave of the school, the engine running and the heater on to combat the slight chill in the air. Ianto slides in with a sigh of relief, offering Jack, in the driver’s seat, a warm smile.

“How’d it go?” Jack asks with a return grin, putting the car into gear and heading fown the long drive.

“Good,” Ianto answers, checking his watch. “I gave him an hour, three at the most, before he accepts. Being different at that age is…hard.” He grimaces at the understatement, remembering his own years of training with people who were so much older or so much younger, and the gaping distance he always felt.

Jack's hand finds his between the seats and gives it a slight squeeze, though he never looks away from the road. “So. Cyberkinetic? Empath? Healer?”

“None of the above.” Ianto laughs a little, running his free hand over his face and then tossing his hat into the back seat. “I believe, Captain, that we just found our first baby Prime.” He glances at the GPS unit on the dash, and says, “We should find a hotel. Save us a day’s drive, coming back to pick him up.”

Jack obediently heads for the nearest town. “You're that certain of his decision?”

Ianto doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t have to.

Jonathon Ross is a Prime, or will be. That’s answer enough.


End file.
